Matthew Wilkens has a fascinating LARB review of what sounds like a fascinating book: Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History
But changing the canon — or even a proliferation of canons, as literary studies has fractured into a collection of increasingly well-defined subfields — takes us only so far. Readers are finite creatures, capable of making their way through only a tiny fraction of the millions of books published over the centuries. The problem, at this sort of scale, has less to do with canonical selection bias than it does with our inevitable ignorance of nearly everything that has ever been written. […] So how can we know the outlines of literary history without reading an impossible number of books?
One answer would be “to change the way we work, to preserve large-scale claims by ending the singular identification of literary study with close reading.” The important word there is “singular”; he’s not saying we should give up on close reading but that we should supplement it with the kind of quantitative studies featured in the book under review. I won’t try to summarize his summary of the book’s strengths and weaknesses, but I agree with him that we’re going to be hearing a lot more about this approach, and I’m guessing it’s going to produce some exciting results. (Thanks, Paul!)
Frau Riemann kommt wirklich nicht sonderlich sympathisch rüber. Das ist ein Problem wenn man Promotion machen soll und will. Aber dieser »Moderator« ist eine vollkommene Katastrophe. Furchtbar bis gar nicht recherchiert, mit Informationen die Jahre alt sind und genialen Fragen wie »Können Sie sich vorstellen in einer Beziehung in einer solchen Abhängigkeit zu leben?«. Da langt man sich an den Kopf. Wesentlich peinlicher als der unprofessionelle Auftritt von Frau Riemann ist das komplette Versagen dieses »SachenÂwegÂmoÂdeÂrieÂrers« wie Herr Niggemeier ihn richtig nennt.
[Hey, at least the spammers take an interest… –LH.]